Frank Fehrenbach – författare

The literary, artistic, and scientific culture of early modern Naples is closely linked to the natural topography of the city, stretching from Iacopo Sannazaro’s poetic evocation of the Campania landscape to Giambattista Vico’s approach in which he anchors human civilization to the existential confrontation with natural forces. With the open sea, the rocky coastline, and the menacing presence of Vesuvius, the image of Naples, more than any other city in early modern times, is associated in the collective imagination with the forces of nature. Even the populace was interpreted as a force of nature. In this volume, art, literature, and science historians investigate the convergence of culture and nature in a unique geographic context.

Dealing with forces is part of the basic inventory of artistic processes. In giving shape and movement to material, such forces are manifested in a specific form; as push and pull, for example, as heaviness and lightness, but also as attachment and dissolution. The articles in the book examine notions of formative and motive forces using examples from art, music, dance, theater, photography and literature. The questions posed not only cover how historical notions of force (such as energeia and vis from ancient rhetoric) are adopted, taken further, and correlated with mechanically, metaphysically and organologically based concepts of force, but also how, in the examination of form and movement, the inherent concepts of force are manifested or presented in a new light.